Guardians of Time (19 page)

Lili smirked. “Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.” Bronwen met Lili’s
gaze. “David doesn’t even suspect, does he?”

“He wouldn’t have gone to Avalon if he had,”
Lili said.

“And you wanted him to go.”

“Of course I didn’t want him to go!” Lili
spit the words out. “But he needed to go.” Lili looked away. “My
mother died in childbirth, Bronwen.”

“I know.”

Lili shook her head. “It’s a burden we all
carry. I can see the fear weighing Dadfydd down. I don’t want to
add to his troubles, but in the dark, in the middle of the night, I
want to scream sometimes. I can’t let the fear go.” And then she
finally told Bronwen the truth. “I wish I weren’t having this
baby.”

Bronwen’s throat was thick with emotion. She
swallowed hard, searching for the words that would make this better
for Lili, though she knew finding surety and letting go of the fear
was something Lili could only do for herself. “We’ve had this
conversation before, remember? That time, you and I were the ones
consoling Anna.”

“I remember. I was so confident then. I want
that surety back. Instead, I’ve been reduced to a quivering mess by
this child. I’ve spend months lying to my husband on the way to
lying to myself.” Lili made a helpless gesture with one hand.
“Sometimes I look at him, and I just want to wrap my arms around
him and protect him from the world. An entire country depends on
him, and all these bus passengers only added to his worries. I
hated them for that and wanted nothing more than for them all to go
home. When he decided that he needed to take them himself, I was
relieved.”

“But you still didn’t tell him about the
baby.”

“They had to go back, and he needed to take
them,” Lili said. “When Shane got sick, Dafydd felt such guilt. How
could I make him feel more by asking him to value me over Shane, or
by speculating about the baby when there was no way to know the
truth?”

Bronwen reached for Lili’s hand.
“Admittedly, it’s too late now.”

Lili squeezed back. “There’s still a chance
I could be wrong.”

“Did Catriona check you liked I asked her
to?” Bronwen said.

Catriona was the chief midwife at the
hospital, now completely in charge since Rachel was in the modern
world.

“Yes,” Lili said.

Bronwen didn’t reply, and after a few
seconds Lili sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m slightly dilated, but
less than two centimeters,” she said, perfectly parroting what had
to have been Catriona’s words, themselves learned from Rachel.
Centimeters were a form a measurement without context in the Middle
Ages, and Bronwen briefly wondered if, going forward, they would
apply only to childbirth.

“Thus, you’re staying in bed until David
gets back,” Bronwen said.

“So it seems,” Lili said.

Bronwen studied her sister-in-law some more.
“Being strong doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help.”

“I knew that once,” Lili said. “I get lost
in being Queen of England and forget how to be myself.”

A knock came at the door, and then
Gwenllian, Llywelyn’s ten-year-old daughter by his wife, Elin,
who’d died at Gwenllian’s birth, pushed the door open without
asking for permission.

“I can help mind Arthur,” Gwenllian
said.

Lili patted the bed beside her, to indicate
that Gwenllian should join them. At first the girl perched on the
edge of bed in a very ladylike manner, but then, after a moment,
she crawled under the covers with Lili and put her head on her
shoulder. Bronwen hadn’t been party to Gwenllian’s conversation
with Meg and Llywelyn before they left, but she remembered being
ten. Gwenllian had to be feeling abandoned.

“They had to leave us,” Bronwen said.

“I know,” Gwenllian said, speaking perfect
American English, “but I wish they’d taken me with them. Other
children got to go.”

“Only those who are from Avalon and are
going to stay there forever,” Lili said. “The rest of us had to
stay behind.”

Because she was small for her age and
reserved, it was easy to forget that Gwenllian was nearing
womanhood. Her heart-shaped face had thinned in the last six
months, and her long blonde curls fell halfway down her back. With
her blue eyes, she was the epitome of medieval female beauty, just
as her mother had been.

Llywelyn and Meg were already talking about
marriage for her, trying to tread a middle way between using her to
make an alliance with another royal house and allowing Gwenllian
the opportunity to choose her husband. The negotiations between Meg
and Llywelyn had been heated, and finally David had stepped in and
suggested they give Gwenllian a list of prospective suitors and
allow her to make the first cut. Given her beauty and that she was
a princess of Wales, men would be falling all over themselves for
the chance to win her hand when the time came.

Fortunately, they had a few more years
before they needed to make a decision. Right now she was just a
ten-year-old girl missing her mother.

“What if they don’t come back?” Gwenllian
said. “What if Mama—” She stopped, choking off what she’d been
about to say.

“I’ve traveled like they did,” Bronwen said.
“It’s scary when it happens. They were all scared when they left,
even if they were trying not to show it, but what does your brother
always say?”

“Fear should never stop you from doing what
it is right, and courage isn’t about not being afraid—it’s about
acting even when you are afraid,” Gwenllian recited. “I’ve heard
Callum say it too.”

“And they’re right.” Lili hugged Gwenllian
to her.

“So why didn’t you tell Dafydd about the
baby?” Gwenllian looked up into Lili’s face.

Lili bit her lip. “Because I was afraid, and
it did stop me from doing what was right. Sometimes adults don’t
live up to what they say they believe.”

“It’s called being a hypocrite,” Gwenllian
said, with all the complacency of the ten-year-old girl she was.
“Dafydd told me.”

Bronwen gave a small smile. “Sometimes,
though, it is just being afraid.”

Lili squeezed Gwenllian again.
“
Cariad,
I promise I will do better, if not for myself, then
for you.” But as she met Bronwen’s eyes over Gwenllian’s head, she
stiffened as a contraction overtook her.

Bronwen gently rubbed Gwenllian’s arm with
the back of one finger to get her attention. “Run and get Catriona.
Ready or not, the baby is on its way.”

Peter

“Y
ou’ve turned
melancholy all of a sudden,” Bridget said.

They were approaching the royal manor at
Chirk, needing a meal as well as the opportunity to leave another
message for Samuel as to their progress, were he to decide to
follow them. Peter had once visited the modern Chirk Castle, back
in Avalon before the bombings in Cardiff, but it had been built by
King Edward after he conquered Wales, so it didn’t exist in this
world.

“Just thinking,” Peter said.

If he and Bridget were really in a
relationship, which he wanted very much, he knew he needed to learn
how to tell her more about what was in his mind, but he didn’t want
to talk about the twenty-first century with Simon present. Peter
flicked his eyes in the direction of the man-at-arms, and instead
of being irritated by Peter’s lack of communication, Bridget
nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “How far are we going
tonight?”

“Let’s decide after we eat.” Peter should
have been tired, given the upheavals of the day, but he was wide
awake, and so were Bridget and Simon, who’d stayed a silent shadow,
leading the way for the ride from the ambush site. “The steward
here always has a good ear to the ground.”

Chirk wasn’t exactly a booming metropolis,
but because of the royal manor, it included a small village. The
three of them had to pass the green and the church dedicated to St.
Tysilio in order to reach the manor house, which was nestled in the
bend of the River Ceiriog. Peter’s eyes lit for a second at the
thought of sharing what was sure to be a very uncomfortable bed
with Bridget.

It wouldn’t do, though. Not with standards
of propriety in the Middle Ages. Still, if they decided to stay,
the manor included two rooms in the back, which would hopefully be
serviceable for their needs and might possibly be more comfortable
than any bed at the inn in Whittington. It was their decision to
arrive so late. They could have returned to Dinas Bran and started
in the morning, so they had no business being choosy about where
they laid their heads.

In the last year, Peter had ranged all
around this area with Darren as part of their service to Callum and
to Samuel, as the sheriff, keeping the peace in Shropshire. Chirk
itself, though on the English side of Offa’s Dyke, had always had
strong ties to Wales. While Peter had grown up in a suburb of
Bristol, the countryside had never been far away, at least for him.
He’d spent his holidays on his grandparents’ small farm near Cwmhir
Abbey in Wales, where Llywelyn’s headless body was said to have
been buried in 1282 after his head had been taken to England and
stuck on a pike at the Tower of London.

Chirk was around forty miles as the crow
flies from Abbey Cwmhir, and Shropshire was the same green
landscape he’d grown up with, even if, east of Offa’s Dyke, it was
somewhat less mountainous than Wales proper. Afghanistan had been
dry but mountainous in places, and he’d been far more comfortable
with that landscape than the city kids from London, Manchester, or
Liverpool.

Peter had been to the manor at least a
half-dozen times before, though always with Darren. George, the
steward, recognized him instantly as he and Bridget entered the
small hall, which was approximately twenty-four by thirty-six
feet.

“My lord!” Looking concernedly at their wet
clothes, George hurried across the wooden floor. “What can I get
for you and—” he paused, eyebrows raised, “—your lady wife?” George
only glanced at Simon, who’d come in right behind them, recognizing
him as a retainer rather than a knight. “I have a nice table here
for you by the fire.”

Knowing his place, Simon made his way to the
back of the hall, where members of the manor’s small garrison were
seated. He had a beer in front of him almost before he sat
down.

“Thank you, George. We need food and
drink.”

“And, perhaps a place to sleep for the
night?” George said.

Peter glanced at Bridget, who nodded and
shrugged at the same time. It
was
late. “If you have it,”
Peter said. “And how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not
a lord and am barely a knight.”

Callum had knighted both Darren and Peter,
claiming that in order to serve him properly, they needed to have
the authority that came with the station. Peter was afraid that
other men in Callum’s guard would resent them leapfrogging over
them, but they hadn’t—mostly because Callum treated everyone
fairly. Any man who could afford his own sword and horse, and had
distinguished himself in Callum’s service, could find himself
knighted.

Callum didn’t care about bloodlines. He’d
also knighted Samuel, who had to be the only Jewish knight in the
entire realm.

“Of course, sir,” George said, ignoring
Peter’s request as he always did. “This way.”

Bridget smiled. “Thank you.”

Once seated, Peter leaned across the table
towards Bridget. “You understand the deception about our
relationship?”

“I shouldn’t be traveling with you unless
I’m your wife,” she said. “I know.”

“You don’t mind, though, do you?” Peter
said. “Being my wife, I mean?”

He had no idea before he said the words that
he was going to ask her that question. It had burst out of him
without him thinking, and, as usual with women, he’d done this
completely the wrong way round. No romance, no flowers or poems, no
loving words.

Bridget just sat looking at him, her hands
in her lap. She hadn’t answered his question of course. What woman
would, given the way he’d asked?

“You don’t have to answer, but please, don’t
make a scene.”

Bridget gave a short laugh and shook her
head. “When have I ever made a scene?”

Then George was back with wine for both of
them, followed by a boy carrying a trencher with meat, cheese,
fresh baked bread, and onions enough for two.

“George,” Peter said before the steward
could leave, “have you noticed anything unusual along the road
through Chirk today?”

George adjusted the trencher so it lay
exactly equidistant from Peter and Bridget. Peter had noticed a
perfectionist tendency—almost a military rigidity—in George the
previous times he’d visited here. It was always odd to encounter in
a medieval person what he would have viewed as a strictly modern
sensibility. It indicated, of course, that there was very little
about human behavior that was truly modern.

“I don’t know if I could say one way or the
other. What do you mean by
unusual
?”

Peter swiveled in his chair to survey the
room, which was moderately full with perhaps a dozen other people,
mostly men, but a few women too, maids or wives. Christmas Eve was
a time for community and celebration, no less here than in the
modern world. In this case, however, they might all be sitting up
late because they would shortly be attending midnight mass at the
church. He and Bridget would need to go too.

“I apologize for not being specific enough.
What I meant was—has anyone mentioned seeing riders along the road
to Whittington today—either more men than usual, possibly passing
north as a group and returning south in smaller companies?”

Peter was guessing about the latter
arrangement, but if he had been the one to ambush a French emissary
and the High Steward of Scotland, that’s the way he’d have done
it.

George frowned. “The road definitely saw
more traffic today than usual, but that would be because of the
Scots.”